A Few Great Things About 2013 Topps Heritage Minor Leagues

I recently purchased a box of 2013 Topps Heritage Minor Leagues. While I was not a fan of the Major-League edition, I am a fan of this version. The lightweight, too-smooth card stock and low-resolution photography don't bother me here. I like that I got practically the entire base set, not to mention a smattering of inserts, from my one box. Here are a few other great things about this set:

Rio Ruiz needs to change his name to "Rio Bandita." Amiright? 

1) The team names are not in a uniform color. Now, I have not heard of many of these teams. And their Major-League affiliations? Forget it. But it doesn't matter. My Heritage-programmed brain saw two cards of players on the Quad Cities River Bandits (the Houston Astros' Class-A affiliate in the Midwest League), each with "River Bandits" in a different color, and immediately thought one was a variation. Once I saw that this was true for many other teams, my love for it increased. It was not a variation! It was just a quirk of the design to add a little spice into the set. Awesome.

2) There are many teams represented, and not just at the same level. Granted, the set is supposed to highlight the 225 best players (or most hyped) minor leaguers in the system, but it's still fresh to open a pack and get a handful of players from different levels. Also, some of the team names are just ridiculous. Drive? Power? Storm? C'mon. At least at seems some thought went into "Lug Nuts" and "Blue Rocks," although both are smirk-ready for a bus full of 19-year-old jocks.

3) Each player smacks of potential, upside, whatever you want to call it. Not every one of these guys will star at the Major-League level. Heck, most of these probably won't even get to the Major Leagues. But that's what makes a set like this great: You can smell the optimism when you open the pack.

4) The traditional Topps "magazine-cover" design of the 1964 base set really works for some of these cards. They look like how a classic baseball card should look. You know what I mean? This card of Michael Choice is what I'm talking about. Actually, many of the cards achieve this effect, but those with bats leaving the frame work the best.


5) I counted four sons of ex-Major Leaguers on the base set checklist who shared their dads' famous names. And then there's Mike Piazza. Born in 1986, he's too old to be the son of Mike Piazza, right? This is some "Baseball's Two Hal Smiths" territory here, folks.

6) If I have a son, I will definitely give him a weird name. Because if today's crop of 20-year-olds is any indication, an off-the-wall name will give him better than a fifty-fifty chance of achieving professional sports stardom—or at least a shot at making the cast of a reboot of American Gladiators.

Finally, best card of the set: Joe Panik, Flying Squirrels. Let's be honest: If a flying squirrel was coming at you, I'd bet the first thing you'd think of is "panic."

Saturday Morning Scooch

I attended Syracuse University for undergrad. And though I was in Central New York for four years, I only made it to one Syracuse Chiefs ... er, SkyChiefs, game: a doubleheader against the Pawtucket Red Sox. Admittedly, I only went to the game because it was two for the price of one and it was Pawtucket. I don't remember who won, but I remember Jin Ho Cho pitched lights out for Pawtucket in one of the games, I froze my butt off, and me and my friends heckled our brains out for two or three hours. Heckling so much that we rejoiced when Brian Daubach (on Pawtucket at the time), started nodding in agreement with much of what we were screaming.

If you've never been there, P & C Stadium is tiny. It's also built, like much of Syracuse, on a never-ending swamp. (This may have to do with its proximity to Lake Onandaga, which at the time was easily the most toxic lake ever. So toxic that the city knew they had to dredge it, but feared a toxic black cloud of death would envelop the city if they did, or so the legend had it.) In other words, pretty much everyone could hear what anybody else said, especially if you were saying it at the top of your lungs. I think the rest of the crowd wanted us to go away, quickly and quietly.

I bring all this up this early today because I came across this promotional card of Scooch, the anthropomorphic orange blob the SkyChiefs called their mascot. (And by the way, "SkyChiefs" is one letter away from "SkyChefs.") To anyone familiar with Syracuse popular culture, Scooch is a blatant rip off of Otto, the Syracuse University Orange. Instead of just paying SU for Otto to show up at some home games, the team created a full body costume of... is it a hedgehog? Or a Gorg? I just don't know.

What I do know is that they were kind enough to let us know that Scooch does birthday parties, and even provided his phone number.